Techstars is a global network that helps entrepeneurs succeed.
A curated source for everything entrepreneurial in your community.
Startup Week: Celebrating entrepreneurs is communities across the globe.
Start building your future in just 54 hours. Learn, Network, Startup.
Learn More

We are thrilled to announce Ed Colgate as Keynote Speaker for Startup Weekend Maker Edition. Ed has dedicated most of his career to the study of haptic interface, and is considered one of the leading scholars in the field. As a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, Ed has maintained a robust research program that has led to two previous spin-off companies: Cobotics (acquired by The Stanley Works in 2002), and Kinea Design (acquired by HDT Robotics in 2011). He is a prolific inventor with twenty-five issued patents and several more pending. He is recognized for seminal contributions to the design and control of haptic interfaces, and in 2007 was selected as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. In recent years, he has focused on Surface Haptics and developing the technological foundation for Tanvas.

What's Tanvas? Tanvas technology adds a new dimension; the realistic sense of touch, so you can feel dynamic textures with the swipe of a finger. The major shortcoming of a touchscreen is that it’s a screen—flat, glassy, cold. Tanvas is a new technology that imbues displays with haptics to simulate how the things you see on screen feels in the real world. As Tanvas explains it, all the magic happens between your fingers and the screen. Using electrostatic fields to create friction, the company can simulate different textures like choppy, grainy, fine, and wavy, transforming a touchscreen from something you simply touch into something you can actually feel. Don't believe me?

Watch!

[arve url="https://youtu.be/_yE5xl88BVk" description="Tanvas Video"/]

Join us for Startup Weekend Maker Edition kicking off this Friday at mHUB Chicago! You don't want to miss out on hearing from one of the World's leading inventors as he shares his journey to entrepreneurship and the future of Touch!